This invention relates to systems for simulating and evaluating the wedge flow characteristics of mixing paddles of differing predetermined configurations mixing differing viscous materials to determine ideal paddle configurations for a particular viscous material. More particularly the invention is concerned with the dynamic measurement and evaluation of the torque forces and bending moments applied to a mixing shaft via a paddle having a curvilinear profile surface arranged stationarily at a so-called dispersion angle relative to a rotating curvilinear barrel or container surface.
Heretofore, paddle shape has been determined in continuous mixers of the type disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,195,868 to Loomans, for example, by trial and error in laboratory mixers which are small scale versions of the mixer to be built for a particular throughput of material. The paddle shapes available were frequently not the most efficient configuration for mixing a specific material.
In the mixing systems which are available in the marketplace for mixing, blending and reacting materials in a continuous manner, the most efficient, for a wide variety of materials, are those of the co-generative type described in the aforementioned U.S. patent, wherein the mixer paddles are revolved in radially co-wiping relationship on twin mixer shafts which rotate at the same speed and in the same direction in a figure eight-shaped, stationary barrel chamber.
We have determined that the forces which are generated within such mixers are also generated when the paddle is maintained in a given stationary position within a revolving cylindrical bowl containing the viscous material.